The great merit of Cassiodorus, that which shows his deep insight into the needs of his age and entitles him to the eternal gratitude of Europe, was his determination to utilise the vast leisure of the convent for the preservation of Divine and human learning and for its transmission to after ages. In the miserable circumstances of the times Theology was in danger of becoming brutified and ignorant; the great treasures of Pagan literature were no longer being perpetuated by the slaves who had once acted as _librarii_ to the Greek or Roman noble; and with every movement of the Ostrogothic armies, or of the yet more savage hordes who served under the Imperial standard, with every sacked city and with every ravaged villa, some Codex, it may be such as we should now deem priceless and irreplaceable, was perishing. This being the state of Italy, Cassiodorus resolved to make of his monastery not merely a place for pious meditation, but a theological school and a manufactory for the multiplication of copies, not only of the Scriptures, not only of the Fathers and the commentators on Scripture, but also of the great writers of pagan antiquity. In the chapter[80] which he devotes to the description of the _scriptorium_ of his monastery he describes, with an enthusiasm which must have been contagious, the noble work done there by the _antiquarius_: 'He may fill his mind with the Scriptures while copying the sayings of the Lord. With his fingers he gives life to men and arms them against the wiles of the devil. So many wounds does Satan receive as the _antiquarius_ copies words of Christ. What he writes in his cell will be scattered far and wide over distant Provinces. Man multiplies the heavenly words, and by a striking figure--if I may dare so to speak--the three fingers of his hand express the utterances of the Holy Trinity. The fast-travelling reed writes down the holy words, and thus avenges the malice of the Wicked One, who caused a reed to be used to smite the head of the Saviour.' [Footnote 80: The 30th of the De Institutione Div. Litt.] It is true that the passage here quoted refers only to the work of the copyist of the Christian Scriptures, but it could easily be shown from other passages[81] that the literary activity of the monastery was not confined to these, but was also employed on secular literature. [Footnote 81: For instance, in cap. xv., after cautioning his copyists against rash corrections of apparent faults in the sacred MSS., he says: 'Ubicunque paragrammata in disertis hominibus [i.e. in classical authors] reperta fuerint, intrepidus vitiosa recorrigat.' And the greater part of cap. xxviii. is an argument against 'respuere saecularium litterarum studia.'] [Sidenote: Bookbinding.] [Sidenote: Mechanical appliances for the convent.]